“How can I get a job in Salesforce Marketing Cloud” is one question that people ask me most often – whether that be face to face, via LinkedIn DMs, or presentation Q&As. So, it made sense to write a guide highlighting my key tips that can be followed to bag a job specializing in Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC).
This article starts from the beginning and assumes that the reader doesn’t have any, or minimal, experience with the Salesforce Marketing Cloud platform. This advice mentioned in the article is applicable to various people such as fresh graduates, or working professionals with experience in some other domain.
By the end of this guide you will understand the following points:
- Why is Salesforce Marketing Cloud a Good Career Choice?
- How Can You Learn Salesforce Marketing Cloud?
- 5 Ways To Find a Salesforce Marketing Cloud Role.
Why is Salesforce Marketing Cloud a Good Career Choice?
There are multiple reasons why people want to get into the SFMC ecosystem:
- Booming Salesforce job market: This guide from Salesforce Ben outlines why a Salesforce career is so lucrative.
- SFMC is a revenue-generating product: You can see from Salesforce’s financial reports that SFMC has a lot of traction, being one of the core parts of their business. More revenue means more customers – which in turn, means more demand for specialists.
- Compensation for SFMC specialists: Being specialists, salary figures are high for those individuals skilled in SFMC. See indicative compensation for North America below – further regions, such as Europe & Asia Pacific, can be found in the Marketing Cloud Salary Guide.
- Multiple Types of Roles: There are 4 main roles when it comes to Marketing Cloud – Marketing Cloud Administrator, Marketing Cloud Consultants, Marketing Cloud Developers, and Marketing Cloud Architects. Each of these roles involves different day-to-day activities, so your skill set would be tailored to one.
Read more: What Does a Marketing Cloud Specialist Do?
How Can You Learn Salesforce Marketing Cloud?
Salesforce provides their products for free, so people don’t experience barriers to upskill on their technology (for example, Sales Cloud Developer Edition. Unfortunately, when it comes to SFMC, there’s no equivalent available (yet, but there are requests on the Salesforce IdeaExchange).
So, with limited hands-on resources, if you want to learn Salesforce Marketing Cloud then you have to do so online resources, and without a Salesforce Marketing Cloud org.
The resources I recommend in this section will you help to learn about the SFMC platform, the marketing domain, and its related processes, and earn SFMC certifications:
- Trailhead: Marketing Cloud 101 Trailmix
- Tidbitsforu.com blog.
- Salesforce Trailblazer Community events.
- SFMC Stack Exchange (for unique, or complex, use cases).
- Marketing Cloud Administrator Certification Bootcamp Day1 – Certification Overview
- AMPscript Bootcamp.
Learn about Marketing concepts and their processes:
- The Ultimate Dictionary of Marketing Terms You Should Know
- What is Marketing Automation?
- SQL vs. MQL: What They Are and How They Differ
- How the Marketing Funnel Works From Top to Bottom
Refer to the below guides, which contain advice on SFMC certifications and the knowledge required:
- Which Salesforce Marketing Cloud Certification Should I Pass First?
- Marketing Cloud Consultant Certification Bootcamp – Day 1 – Account Configuration
- Marketing Cloud Administrator Certification Bootcamp Day1 – Certification Overview
My SFMC Career Journey
When I started my journey in the Salesforce ecosystem in 2017, I had no knowledge about Salesforce Marketing Cloud. So, started with Salesforce CRM and proceeded to take the Salesforce Admin certification which helped me to get my first Salesforce job.
Once a got a job with a Salesforce partner in India, I was able to get my foot in the door. I started exploring Salesforce Marketing Cloud since it interested me, and had plenty of opportunities – a big gap between the resources supply and demand.
Below are the steps that I took in order to work on real-life projects:
- Trailhead: This is a common approach to start learning about Marketing and Salesforce Marketing Cloud concepts when someone enters the Salesforce ecosystem. Initially, I felt lost on Trailhead, since it is a vast knowledge platform, but slowly and surely, I started finding the key “Trailmixes” (collections of learning modules) which made my learning more structured, and easier.
- Networking: I got to know my local Trailblazer community leaders in the marketing space by attending the Trailblazer community sessions. There, I asked them questions about Salesforce Marketing Cloud resources, getting a job, and other aspects. It helped me a lot since they referred me to job openings in their companies, or to other fellow Trailblazers.
- Hands-on experience: Since I was already working for a Summit Salesforce partner, I had the luxury of hands-on work in Salesforce Marketing Cloud orgs: This was really important since I was able to learn the theoretical knowledge (the above two points) and then was able to apply it to the Salesforce Marketing Cloud instance.
- Real-life use cases, challenges, and project delivery: Also, I spoke to my colleagues who were working on live Salesforce Marketing Cloud projects within my company. This helped me to learn about the real-life use case, challenges, and project delivery aspects of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud projects.
5 Ways To Find a Salesforce Marketing Cloud Role
Let’s face it, getting a job in any domain without relevant work experience will be difficult. With dedication, some smart work, and hacks, however, you can certainly make it easier for yourself. Remember a mile-long journey starts with a single step.
Before you move on, you would have learned about SFMC (the above links) since every employer will expect you to understand the basic technical aspects of SFMC. For example, if you are applying for an SFMC Developer position, without SFMC experience, then you should be prepared with knowledge of the following aspects of SFMC, such as HTML, CSS, AMPscript, and SQL. Yes, these aspects can be learned without having any hands-on experience on the SFMC platform, but be transparent about the extent of your knowledge.
Interview preparation tips
To prepare for an interview, you should review these interview questions so you know what to expect:
For interview preparation, I would recommend a good understanding of the topics will boost your chances of having a positive outcome.
I will divide the Salesforce Marketing Cloud interview knowledge into two sections: Project-related knowledge and Salesforce Marketing Cloud technical knowledge.
Project-related knowledge: You should be aware of the following aspects of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud project:
- End-to-end knowledge of at least 2 projects you have been involved with for a Salesforce Marketing Cloud implementation.
- End-to-end business processes.
- Various phases of the projects.
- Business benefits delivered.
- What your role in the project is and the Salesforce Marketing Cloud modules you utilized.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud technical knowledge:
If you are applying for a technical position then the following items should be on your priority list:
- AMPScript
- SQL
- HTML/CSS
- SOAP, REST APIs
- Knowledge of Email Studio, Journey Builder, Automation Studio
If you are applying for an Architect level role, then you should be aware of the following points:
- Integrations with external systems, especially without out-of-the-box connectors.
- Subscriber Key and its use case and best practices.
- IP warming use cases, best practices.
- Preference center, unsubscribe processes.
- Solid knowledge of Email Studio, Content Builder, Contact Builder, Journey Builder, Automation Studio, Mobile Studio, Synchronized Data extension, MCC.
Now, moving on to the ways you can find your first move into the SFMC ecosystem…
1. Search for an Internship
An internship allows you to gain critical experience without being expected to know the platform or domain. There are multiple ways of finding an SFMC internship, which could be either paid or unpaid.
- Google Search
They say, using Google is an art. Use the search term ‘Salesforce Marketing Cloud AND internship’, and tweak the query with the Date posted filter, within a month.
Below are the results for the same query that I did on Google. Remember these results will be different for others since it’s based on my location and my search history.
- LinkedIn Search
Similar to Google search, use keywords ‘AND’ ‘OR’ ‘NOT’ to get the desired results on LinkedIn. Tweak the query by selecting the Posts and Sort by Latest.
Apart from the obvious ways to search, you can also use hashtags on LinkedIn like #sfmc #sfmcGuru #salesforceMarketingcloud #marketingCloud to get more results.
Volunteer Work
Volunteering is a stepping stone on the way to getting a paid job in the SFMC ecosystem – plus, you are also adding value to the world!
The advantages of volunteering jobs are that you can be flexible with your working hours, skill set, and other details. Since these types of jobs are mostly for nonprofits they are happy to accommodate.
Take note of what I’m about to say. It’s so important that before volunteering your time, ensure you have a mentor who can support your decisions and oversee any changes you are making. The worst scenario would be to cause issues down the line for the nonprofit organization. Check out this guide on How to Volunteer in the Salesforce Ecosystem.
But the bottom line is: be honest about your skillset (or lack of it :)) and your availability.
When I decided to do a career shift in the Salesforce ecosystem (after a mid-life crisis!) I used volunteering opportunities with nonprofit organizations to get hands-on experience, using the below sites:
Some of these opportunities will involve working with Salesforce products like Sales cloud, NPSP etc., and not necessarily Salesforce Marketing Cloud – but grab these opportunities since it’s better to be in the Salesforce ecosystem and have that experience, than sitting outside the ecosystem with no Salesforce experience at all.
Once you gain valuable experience in the Salesforce ecosystem, you will have a definite advantage over others.
Move Horizontally Within an Organisation
This point is relevant to people currently working within companies that are either Salesforce customers or partners – using SFMC in any capacity.
You should try to make a move toward the SFMC team using this three-step approach:
- Understand how SFMC works within your organization: Ask the relevant team members about each and every detail i.e. both from a process and technical standpoint.
- Talk to your current manager: Have an open discussion to explain your career move and the objective behind it. Decide an amicable timeline for your management to find your replacement and your movement e.g. by the end of the third quarter or year-end etc. In some cases, this might be a difficult conversation since your company might have a strict policy of cross-movement within the organization, so do some investigation first.
- Get certified in SFMC: This step will help in two ways. Firstly, build confidence in your SFMC abilities, and secondly, it will show your employer or prospective team that you are serious about your move into the new team. Be prepared to pay for your own certification/s if your employer isn’t prepared to sponsor costs that aren’t related directly to your current role.
LinkedIn Jobs Search
This is my favorite way because there are so many postings going up every month. LinkedIn can be used in multiple ways to get a job, and below are a few of them.
- Job search via the “Jobs” tab: Use the keyword ‘Salesforce Marketing Cloud’, and filter down by location and others. The below examples showcase the job search with the ‘Salesforce Marketing Cloud’ keyword and the locations the USA, UK, and India.
- Search through LinkedIn posts: Search for the following keywords sfmc AND job, Marketing cloud AND job. Use the filters ‘Posts’ with Sort as Latest.
- Network on LinkedIn & other community events
You can also search for SFMC jobs by connecting, and engaging, with SFMC influencers on LinkedIn. These people are the “Trailblazers” who want to see everyone succeed – if you approach them in a professional way, they can be very helpful.
Another approach is to join the Trailblazer Community group near you. You can even participate by presenting or volunteering your time to organize the meetups.
In the past two years, almost all events are held online, which has made it easier to attend sessions conducted around the globe.
You can register in any no. of the groups and start attending.
The Salesforce Ben Job Board
Salesforce Ben recently launched its very own Salesforce-dedicated job board!
The site is loaded with hundreds of roles available worldwide. It offers a job-matching feature that links potential candidates to companies looking for people with particular specialties.
Show off your SFMC knowledge and experience when applying for jobs and streamline communication with potential employers using the direct messaging center.
Final Thought
I would like to emphasize that getting a job in SFMC is a matter of being persistent and using all the channels at your disposal.
Hope this advice has been helpful for your SFMC job search – and I wish you the best of luck with your job search. Please let me know which steps worked for you and which didn’t, and of course, other ways you’ve found successful that we should include.